RSS or Rich Site Syndication is a standard thats based on XML and has been available now for quite some time.
While a lot has been written about the advantages RSS provides to publishers over conventional advertizing methods like email, not much has been written about the advantages RSS provides for search engine optimization.
One much vaunted technique as suggested by many SEO experts is of optimizing websites along themes.
A theme-based site, as the name suggests, is a site where all pages correspond to a particular niche or subject.
So, for example, if your website is designed to sell tennis rackets, your entire site content would be focused around tennis and tennis rackets.
Google, the dominant search engine, gives a lot of weight to the theme factor. Tightly themed pages are preferred by Google and hence rank better in the search results.
Using these RSS feeds you can enhance your sites content without the need to write a single line on your own.
It’s like having your own copywriter – writing theme-based articles for you – for FREE!
Since the feed is highly targeted, it could contain several keywords that you want to rank highly for. Adding these keywords helps Google tag your page as one with relevant content.
Additional Benefits of RSS Feeds:
RSS feeds from large publishers are updated at specific frequencies.
For example Slashdot.org publishes a RSS feed that contains techie articles are updated every hour. Others are updated daily or weekly or some other predefined interval.
When the publisher adds a new article to the feed, the oldest article is dropped.
So, for example, if the feed has 10 items, it will continue to have 10 items even after an update.
How does this benefit you?
Well, for one, you have fresh relevant content for your visitors each hour or each day.
So your visitors are happy.
Content is King, they say, and you can prove it true!
MORE FREQUENT SPIDERING
To the Googlebot, my page that had the RSS feed incorporated into it was as good as a page that was being updated daily, and in its judgement, was a page that was worth visiting daily.
What this means to you is you will have your site being indexed more frequently by the Googlebot and so any new pages that you add to your site will be picked up much faster than your competitors.
An example:
Let’s says a top Internet Marketer comes out with a new product that you review and write up a little article on, and that your competitors do the same.
Since your site uses RSS feeds and is indexed more frequently, the chances of getting your page into the top results in Google will be much higher.
Google generally tends to index pages at the start of the month and if you miss that update, you will probably need to wait till the next month to even see your entry in.
So, if the Googlebot visits your site more frequently, you definitely have an advantage over the competition, as your page has better chances of getting indexed
Imagine what a month’s advantage could do to your sales!
By the time your competitor’s pages have been indexed and added to the search engine, you’ve already have one month worth of affiliate sales and have established yourself as a super-affiliate.
Now there are some sites that offer javascript code that generates content from RSS feeds for your site. These are of absolutely no value as the googlebot cannot read the javascript and the content is not interpreted as part of your page.
Whats needed is code that parses the RSS feed and renders the feed as html content thats part of your page.
This is achieved using server side scripting languages like php or asp.
A good free ASP script is from Kattanweb
http://www.kattanweb.com/webdev/projects/index.asp?ID=7
An equally good php script is CARP http://www.geckotribe.com/rss/carp/
So in addition to optimizing on page and off page factors an RSS feed can be a significant part of your SEO strategy.
Satyajeet Hattangadi is the owner of Novasoft Inc and creator of Traffic Turbocharger http://www.trafficturbocharger.com a Specialized Software Generates Thousands Of Constantly-Updating, Content Rich Pages That Not Only Get You Top Placement on Search Engines,But Also Earn $$$ from FIVE Separate Income Sources!
